Final Print

My blank shirts arrived a day early. My wife suggested that I print the design in brown ink. I think it looks much better than the red in the test print. I plan to list these in my shop tomorrow.

My son refuses to stand for photos unless I promise to not show his face. 

I don't know if anybody read the comments on my last post about the Tour of Flanders, but Ian from the U.K. rode the course on Saturday and watched the race from the side of the road on Sunday. Here's a link to his photos. Keep checking his blog, I'm sure he'll be posting a report soon.

Thanks Ian!

Now this is completely random. Me and my 12 year old son and 16 year old daughter watched the Woodstock documentary on VH1 last night. My kids have been interested in classic rock since they started playing Guitar Hero. I had watched the documentary before but I had completely forgotten that Sly and the Family Stone performed. Awesome!

Test Print

I've dealt with one roadblock after another trying to get my shop up and running again. This is the first screen I've been able to expose with my new ghetto exposure setup. Now I just need shirts to print on.

New bike design

The screen is taped up and ready for the ink.

The first test print on a spare gray American Aparel t shirt left over from another job. I'm going to print this on a "natural" colored t shirt. Natural is kind of an off-white color.

Death of a T Shirt

Like most men if I like an item of clothing I'll wear it till it literally falls apart. I've been known to keep pairs of underwear until the elastic bands have completely separated from the body of the briefs. So I was upset to discover that one of my most comfortable t shirts was no longer suitable to be worn in public. Two large holes appeared in the armpits and in the design, presumably from the stress of the last wash. This shirt will now be taken out of the rotation and be retired.

There is an unusual story behind how I aquired this particular shirt. Back in 1999 when I lived and worked in Abilene, Texas, an aquaintance working for the U.S. Border Patrol boarded a Greyhound bus that had just arrived from El Paso on it's way to Dallas. The Border Patrol agent discovered an unclaimed suitcase in the cargo compartment which when opened was found to contain fifty pounds of marijuana. There were several throw away t shirts in the suitcase used to cover the bales. The agents seized the marijuana and I kept the t shirts.   

OMNH-Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. I've often wondered how this shirt went from the museum gift shop, to El Paso, and eventually into a load of weed.

My poor shirt. It will serve it's new purpose as a shop rag.

Now, I don't know the exact age of the shirt above but I'm guessing that it's not as old as this next shirt which appears to have held up much better after having been washed about an equal number of times.

Nice design

This was my first race.  It was cold, rainy, and generally miserable. I made the rookie mistake of taking too many pulls at the front burning too much energy in the first fifteen miles of the thirty two mile race. I struggled to the finish.

The shirt below is the grandaddy of all my shirts. It was for an Air Force Security Police competition in Las Vegas in 1987. I was stationed at Bergstrom AFB in Austin from 1986 through 1989. The base was shut down some years ago and turned into the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

You can't tell from the photo but this shirt is practically see-through now.

The thing I noticed about my old shirts is that the two oldest, the Security Police and Primavera t shirts are 50/50 cotton polyester blends where as the OMNH shirt is 100 per cent cotton. Maybe I should start printing on 50/50 shirts, or does anybody really need a 20+ year life span from a t shirt?

 Since I started screen printing I can appreciate the work that went into the design and printing of these shirts, especially the shirts that were made before the availability of computers, Photoshop, and everything else that makes life so easy these days. If anybody has any really old t shirts around I like to see them. You can email photos or send me a link. 

Jingle Bash-An Enjoyable Evening

Jingle Bash is over, so that means that my life can return to normal. No more late night printing sessions trying to get ready for the show. The Etsy Dallas leadership did an amazing job organizing this event and drawing crowds of shoppers.

This is our section of the building before the start of the show.


My lovely wife manning our booth. It's almost impossible to get a photo of her when she isn't blinking.


I screen printed these business cards at the last minute the night before the show. We got lots of compliments on them.



We finally had the chance to meet some other Etsy Dallas members. They are a great bunch of people but one of the couples really stood out, Emily and Omar of Backbone, they are super nice people and are a joy to talk to. They are photographers although Omar has a day job working at the Spiral Diner in Dallas. They live in Oak Cliff and Omar uses his bike as his primary means of transportation. Emily says that their place is small but packed full of bikes. We traded some of Emily's photos for a couple of our t shirts.

Emily and Omar


I was also surprised when Mister Pondero himself, Christopher Johnson and his wife showed up at our booth. I wish that we had more time to talk bikes and stuff but business started picking up at about that time. I'm glad you made it out to the show Christopher.

One thing we were asked over and over again was if we printed children's shirts. I haven't yet but I am going to start real soon. We sold lots of shirts but I believe we could have doubled our sales if we printed kids shirts also.

This was our first show and it was a great experience, we had much more business than I had expected plus we made money for our children's Christmas. We'll definitely be doing more shows. Now I need to get back on my bike.

I wanted to show off some of Emily's work. These photos are from her Etsy shop. You can see more of her work here. Support your fellow cyclists and buy a photo if you can.

Another New Shirt 11-18-08

I just finished these. The print is an orange-gold color that is hard to capture in the photos. 

New Shirts on the Way 11-16-08

With my bike out of service I decided to spend the day preparing screens with our two newest designs. I only had time to print the women's shirts today. I think the design, a 1950's Raleigh Superbe, turned out rather well.

Here are the screens shortly after washout.


Test print


The first shirt being printed.






We'll be taking these with us to Jingle Bash. We'll see what kind of response they get. If we sell some I'll print more and put them up for sale in our shop.

Asbestos Press

If you're looking for something interesting to hang on your walls check out one of my favorite poster printers, Asbestos Press. I found Asbestos Press on Myspace a while back and have really been impressed with the results Laura (the owner, artist, printer) acheives with her homemade equipment. She used to have photos on her Myspace page of posters spread all over her living room floor drying. You can buy posters from her Etsy shop. They're a steal at $10. She just started a blog where she posts photos of her most recent work.

Aesthetic Apparatus

A classic video from the guys at Aesthtic Apparutus showing their poster printing process. I guarantee you that the background music will stick in your head.

Getting Ready

I paid for a small ad in the September issue of Urban Velo. These guys have a great new magazine that appears to be very popular. You can go to their web site and read each issue online or subscribe and receive a printed copy. I figured that I had better advertise with them while it's still affordable. I'm pre-printing a few shirts just in case things go well.

Catching Up

Me and my wife had to run to Dallas for a couple of days so I had to play catch-up to fill some t shirt orders this morning. Everything seemed to be going wrong in the garage over the past week. When I haven't used my screens for a few days I wipe them down with a soy based cleaner to make sure that the prints are nice and sharp. These soy products are much safer to use than traditional screen printing chemicals, which is important since I work out of my house, but they have a limited life span. The soy goes bad. I printed a few shirts several days ago and noticed some faint black shadowy smudges on the fabric. My "on press cleaner" had expired and I didn't have a back up container. Rather than waste any more shirts I just stopped printing. T shirt orders started backing up. Luckily UPS delivered my stuff Friday night and I was good to go this morning. I really don't want people to have to wait too long for their shirts.

Sunday Printing

The high temperature is supposed to hit 107 degrees today, so to prevent heat stroke I decided to get out to the garage and get my printing done early. I had a few Etsy orders to finish so that they can be packed shipped out tomorrow morning.

This Weekend's Project

I've finally gotten around to printing this design in white ink on a dark shirt. The design was meticulously hand drawn from an old catalog by Texas artist Jackie Barefield. Check out her Myspace page. She's listed in my top friends

Printing Tags

After the everything settled down after our front page appearance on Etsy, we had the opportunity to answer some of the emails about our shirts. We were contacted by a lady who is opening a clothing store in a college town up north. She wants to sell our shirts. I realized that we really don't have an official logo, labels, or tags to attach to our shirts. I prepared some large screens and some sheets of tag board I've had around for quite some time. I hadn't used these screens before so I hadn't thought about them being too large for the press I use to print paper and vinyl. My wife has been wanting a new coffee table, so I took the top off of our current table, screwed some clamps on it and now I've got a new, much larger surface to print on.

In this photo I've already printed the red background and I'm registering the 2nd color.


Here's a look at the final print prior to cutting. The registration looks to be a little off.

This is what happens when you're not paying attention and you load the paper upside down.

The finished product.


I think the mistakes look pretty cool.

2nd Design

This is the second design from Justin at Triplemilled. Its a three color print on a light navy Alternative Apparel t shirt. I printed this one and only one after work last night. The set up, registering of the screens, and mixing the inks took forever. I'll be printing the women's version soon.

New Men's Shirt

This is the men's version of the design by Justin at Triplemilled.com. Ultra blue print on a tangerine Alternative Apparel t shirt. I should have these shirts listed for sale in my Etsy shop this weekend.



I guess it's time to take photos somewhere other than my front porch. By the way, that's my son. He appears in all the photos in my Etsy shop. He cringes every time he sees me walking down the hall holding a t shirt.

Printing Again

A guy from Australia ordered ten shirts from us last week, but I had to travel to south Texas for several days for my real job. I hate these unexpected trips. I took the day off work to print his order. It's nice to be printing again.

Welcome to the new Rat Trap Press blog

I'm finally printing again after a short lay-off after the holidays. I opened a shop in Etsy a little while back but didn't really start selling until November. I was really happy with the sales we had in the late part of November till about December 15th when we closed the shop for vacation. Thankfully the Etsy sales paid for our kids Christmas. Since I had a little free time I decided to prepare a couple of new designs.

Here's the screen for an old racing bike design taped up and ready to go.


Test print on a gray t shirt


A highly distressed Tour of Flanders design.